"So on matters of faith," continued the Chinaman, the student
of Confucius, "it is pride that causes error and discord among men. As with the
sun so it is with God. Each man wants to have a special God of his own, or at
least a special God for his native land. Each nation wishes to confine in its
own temples Him whom the world cannot contain. Can any temple compare with that
which God Himself has built to unite all men in one faith and one
religion?

"All human temples are built on the model of this temple, which is
God's own world. Every temple has its fonts, its vaulted roof, its lamps, its
pictures or sculptures, its inscriptions, its books of the law, its offerings,
its altars, and its priests. But in what temple is there such a font as the
ocean; such a vault as that of the heavens; such lamps as the sun, moon, and
stars; or any figures to be compared with living, loving, mutually-helpful men?
Where are there any records of God's goodness so easy to understand as the
blessings which He has strewn abroad for man's happiness? Where is there any
book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart? What
sacrifices equal the self-denials which loving men and women make for one
another? And what alter can be compared with the heart of a good man on which
God Himself accepts the sacrifice?

"The higher a man's conception of God the better will he know Him.
And the better he knows God the nearer will he draw to Him, imitating His
goodness, His mercy, and His love of man. Therefore, let him who sees the sun's
whole light filling the world, refrain from blaming or despising the
superstitious man who in his own idol sees one ray of that same light. Let him
not despise even the unbeliever who is blind and cannot see the sun at
all."

So spoke the Chinaman, the student of Confucius; and all who were
present in the coffee-house were silent, and they disputed no more as to whose
faith was the best.

posted by ALTON on Million
Paths

Ram Dass in Still
Here

Before I had the stroke, I was full
of fears about aging, and one of my major fears was about the sicknesses
that might be lurking ahead. Gandhi says that before you can get to God,
you've got to confront your fears. The stroke took me through one of my deep
fears, and I'm here to report that 'the only thing we have to fear is fear
itself.' This chapter is an antidote to fear,
because reading what this experience has been like for me will give you a
map. It's like you're on a rafting trip, and you're about to hit some
rapids. I've just been through one of those sets of rapids, and maybe my
experiences can help you figure out how to handle the rapids when you
encounter them. Over the years, I've done
practices to confront my fear of change, of which the fear of death is the
foremost. In Benares, I visited the cremation grounds at the ghats. I sat
there in meditation on the side of the Ganges, a sacred river. Bodies were
being burned all around me; I smelled the burning flesh, watched the eldest
son break open the father's skull with a stick to release his spirit. I'd
overcome a lot of my fears about death and change through practices like
that, but there still was an undercurrent of fear in my mind; I was in my
60s, I was 'getting up there.' The stroke
happened to me for many different reasons, including karmic and spiritual
ones. But on the physical level, one of the reasons for the stroke was that
I had been ignoring my body. I had spent most of my life keeping my
Awareness 'free of my body,' as I thought of it then; but I can see now that
I was also ignoring my body, pushing it away. By forgetting to take my blood
pressure medicine, I showed how I was disregarding my body. By ignoring the
early signs that something was wrong when I was diving in the Carribean, I
was disregarding my body. By over-committing myself, never saying 'no' no
matter what my body was telling me, I was disregarding
it. So then came the
stroke. For some days after the stroke, I was
just observing. Not thinking, just observing. A friend described me during
those first days as being wide-eyed, watching everything that was taking
place with a kind of wonderment. Perceptions
from the outside and from the inside were sometimes very different. At one
point I was in what the doctors called a 'non-reactive state,' and they
thought I might die. From the outside, I was an object of concern and a
cause for apprehension. But inside, I was just floating peacefully. My body
was present, but it was irrelevant. It was like I was looking through a
window, and the scene through the window had in it the hospital, and me, and
the doctors, and everybody else - but I was outside looking in. I was really
floating out there'. After awhile, as I
started to become aware of the symptoms of the stroke, my thoughts began to
come in on me. I worried for awhile about what had happened: Where had the
stroke gone in my brain? How bad was it? I didn't know the answers to those
questions for a long time, and that was scary. How long would the domino
effect of symptoms go on? As one thing after another 'went out' on me after
the stroke - my knee, my hip, my shoulder, my ankle - I didn't know what
would go next. How long would the pain go on - would it be days, or months,
or years? I worried what the effect would be of just sitting in my
wheelchair all the time, unable to move around and exercise in the usual
way. That flood of questions carried strong elements of fear with
it. To work with the fear, I turned to my
practices. The stroke called on all the practices I'd learned over the
years: Vipassana meditation, jnana yoga, bhakti, guru kripa - at different
points and in different situations I used them all. But in that particular
crisis I found that I turned to Ramana Maharshi's practice of 'I am not this
body.' I would note each part of my body, and I would say, 'I am not my arm.
I am not my leg. I am not my brain.' That helped me avoid getting caught in
the mind's fears and the body's
sensations. In the months that followed,
though, I came to appreciate that, however wonderful it is as a practice, 'I
am not this body' is only half the truth. The stroke brought me squarely in
touch with the fact that, although I certainly am more than my body, I also
am my body. The stroke brought my Awareness into my body in a powerful way,
with an array of physical symptoms: paralysis, aphasia, pain. The stroke
'grounded' me, in both meanings of the word: it brought me in touch with the
earth plane, with my body, and it made me stay at home. I used to be
traveling constantly, but when you're traveling in a wheelchair, planes
aren't much fun. So this illness 'grounded' me, and taught me what everyone
else already knew: that it's nice to be at
home.

posted by JAN SULTAN on Million
Paths

"The black-hole donut."

The trick, for the quick-witted, is to roll
up into a little ball,all that thought that sustains "you", and as the mass
grows, itapproaches neural star-hood, eventually attaining:white dwarf,
red giant, neutron star,